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SafetyWeb, a service that lets parents monitor their children’s online social activities, has made its first acquisition – Colorado based Odojo. The companies are not disclosing the terms of the deal other than that it is an all cash transaction.

In June SafetyWeb announced a $8 million funding round from Battery Ventures with First Round Capital, and the company has raised a total of $8.75 million.

This appears to be a technology acquisition, and only one Odojo employee, an engineer, will be joining SafetyWeb. Founder Mike Stemple will join SafetyWeb as an advisor. Odojo’s technology will help SafetyWeb identify specific dangers by category, such as “drugs,” “sex,” “suicide,” “anorexia,” “hate,” etc.

This is a space we’ve begun to cover more deeply. Parent anxiety over exactly what their kids are up to online means there’s lot of potential cash for anyone that gives them at least a basic level of monitoring. Last week we covered SocialShield, a less well funded competitor. And the New York TImes also took a look at the space yesterday. Expect intense competition over parents willing to pay a few dollars a month for some peace of mind.

It took only two days since my last post for word to reach me that someone is about to release a new product (the same product that I was hoping someone would create), which will make individuals and/or brands lives a lot easier under Facebook‘s roof.

I can already hear you thinking, man, Facebook Pages again? Yes. Again. But there is a reason why we’re talking about them constantly. Beside the obvious point that these tools can actually help you create a Page with no hassle and easily market yourself on the platform, there are signs of a new trend that we need to pay attention to.

Today, Facebook Pages look alike for the most part. That might be because people don’t have time to invest in them, nor have the qualifications to create an immersed page, or maybe they simply don’t care. But if you own a brand, you should care. Making a page by yourself is not that hard, but it involves some basic HTML familiarity, and many people don’t want to be hassled with any of that.

While Facebook only seems to care about what is beneficial for them, they aren’t really concerned about ease of use for their members. Yet the usage of this service is growing day after day, and still their feature list stays pretty much the same. Here and there, you can see some fine-tuning design-wise, and little things are added, but overall, you can’t do much when it comes to marketing your brands inside Facebook.

Not if you’re a small business anyway.

I believe Facebook creates such boundaries whenever they feel at risk of turning into the next MySpace, but there is still a long way before it comes to that (if ever) and to be honest, MySpace wasn’t bad at all (back in the day).

Only now, in hindsight, do we realize that we have something that looks much better and fits this era with Facebook. However, it is limited by “tabs.” I don’t understand why Facebook won’t allow us to customize at least one tab as we wish?

Meanwhile, should we be surprised that more and more services are trying to give us that ability to customize a Facebook page? These services are born out of a need. It started with Tabs applications such as: Twittertab, Flickrtab, YouTubetab, Picasatab, and many more. But you can’t as easily find a service that allows you to create a ‘Welcome tab’ with such freedom. But don’t worry, I believe we are about to enter a new Facebook page creators trend, and it is only a matter of time before we see more services like RootMusic around soon.

But first let me introduce you to a new service that simply allows you to create a ‘Welcome’ or ‘About’ tab without any Static FBML knowledge, or too much work. Enter Thailand-based Pagemodo, which allows anyone to create a Welcome page through a nicely done generator that is very simple to use.

(Click for a larger version of the image)

This time I don’t really need to explain how to create the page because it is really fairly easy. Once you log in with your Facebook account, you’ll be able to create a new page where you’ll be taken to a self-explanatory editor to help you achieve your page tab. You can choose between two layouts, and start your page (or tab if you wish) creation. Just enter all the information needed. You can add pictures, change the colors & font, and more. Finally, you’ll be asked to choose a Tab – ‘Welcome’ or ‘About us’ (more tab names are coming) And install it on your Facebook page. If you have more than one page, you can create a tab for each, and come back to edit them whenever you want through your account at Pagemodo.

According to Pagemodo, they will always offer a free version so that everyone, even very small organizations, can create custom pages, but these free ones will of course include their footer and might limit some advanced features that only the paying users will get, such as Add Google Analytics, custom tab-names, limited edition layouts (so they can get a unique layout), etc. Currently, Pagemodo is working on a simple payment solution, so people can at least start removing the footer and get an “early bird” discount.

I already explained the value of such pages in my earlier posts, but I’ll quickly explain again: When you set a ‘Welcome’ tab to be the first thing that new visitors land on, you have the ability to place whatever you want under this tab and explain your brand better. The main thing about all these pages is that the companies can customize these pages, so they match company colors, display the company logo, etc. With services such as the one offered by Pagemodo, they can.

This is your opportunity to attract new visitors – simple as that. You can choose to leave it the old and boring way, or take a few minutes to create a new page for your company. The rest is up to you. Moreover, the service is free so I don’t really see any reason to not test/use it. All things considered, I believe it’s a win-win proposition.

Like I’ve said previously, I believe this is just the beginning for these kind of platforms and as long as Facebook doesn’t offer users the tools to customize their own pages, we are going to see more of these tools popping up like mushrooms.

If you already have some design & code skills, my first guide might make more sense to you. But if you don’t, I encourage you to try this service, share your insights and feedback, and help them build a better platform.

Or you can give others like Likeable, Involver, or Vitrue a try. Just know that they are nothing like Pagemodo (see example). In most cases, you need to send them graphics and then they will set one of their own designers to create a page. And of course, you’ll need to pay.

Make no mistake, I’m in favor of paying for good products, but I prefer to take full control of the product I’m using. And so should you.

Regular readers will know that recently I’ve liked to state my bias in the title of my mobile device reviews: I love the iPhone. Some will call that being a fanboy, and that’s fine. But really, it’s just my opinion that the iPhone is hands down the best mobile device out there. If there were a better one, I would use it. But there’s not. So I use the iPhone. And that’s the angle I take towards these mobile device reviews. It’s simple: if you want to be the best, you have to beat the best. Well, one finally has: iPhone 4.

Yeah, if you hate these types of reviews, you’re really going to hate this one.

Before I dive into specifics, I’ll say right away that the iPhone 4 is easily the best mobile device I’ve ever used (notice I didn’t say phone, more on that later). But a lot of you probably already thought you knew I was going to say that. The more interesting question may be: how does it compare to the other iPhones? Or, perhaps even better: is it worth it to upgrade? The short answer is yes.

In my view, iPhone 4 is the biggest leap forward that any iPhone has taken yet over the previous generation. It’s not really any single thing that makes me say that, but it’s the combination of changes to the hardware. The screen is much better. The camera is much better. The video quality is much better. The form factor is much better. The device is faster. It can do more at once (thanks to double the RAM). The battery lasts noticeably longer. And, of course, it has FaceTime.

The main upgrade of the iPhone 3G from the original iPhone was the 3G chip which brought faster download speeds. The main upgrade of the iPhone 3GS from the iPhone 3G was the CPU speed increase and the video-taking capability. All of those were nice upgrades. But again, the iPhone 4 offers much more from a hardware perspective. And that makes it worth the upgrade from an older iPhone, as well as worth an outright purchase if you’re new to the platform.

I wrote down my initial thoughts about the iPhone 4 after playing with it for about 20 minutes after the WWDC keynote in June. This time, I wanted to play around with the device for an entire week, using it as much as possible before I wrote up a full review. Now I have, so here it is.

The Screen

The element most played up by Apple during the WWDC keynote was the iPhone 4′s screen. And rightly so, it’s fairly amazing. The so-called Retina display offers 960×640 pixel resolution at 326 pixels per inch. And it has a great 800:1 contrast ratio. Those specs make it great for both reading text and for watching video content or looking at pictures.

The screen is so sharp that when you’re looking at it, it almost looks as if you’re looking at a sticker overlay that they may put on a display unit at an electronics store. It looks more like you’re looking at a printed out picture than an electronic display.

But here’s the curious thing about the screen: More than a few people I showed it to thought it looked great, but wondered what was exactly so different from the previous iPhone screen. Part of that is because the previous iPhone screen was already good. But then I showed it to them side-by-side with the iPhone 3GS screen and they were blown away.

If Apple really wants to emphasize the screen, I recommend they do the same thing in Apple Store. Of course, then they may have a hard time selling the iPhone 3GS.

But when you do put them side-by-side, it’s easy to see just how much sharper text is on the iPhone 4. And just how much better colors appear. If you bring both close to your eye, on the old one you can see the pixels. On the new one, you can’t. Just look at the picture below — I don’t think I have to tell you which is which.

As I said, previous iPhones already had pretty solid displays, but they had since been passed up by the screens on a few Android devices. For example, I love the Nexus One’s screen, which is 800×480. But the iPhone 4 now destroys that. And, as a bonus, you can actually see it in daylight (which the Nexus One’s use of OLED makes very difficult).

The Speed

The iPhone 4, which uses Apple’s A4 chip just like the iPad, is definitely faster than the iPhone 3GS. However, the most part, it’s not noticeably faster in the same way that the iPhone 3GS was noticeably faster than the iPhone 3G. But it is in some cases, such as photo manipulation. One of my favorite apps is one called CameraBag (you can find it here for $1.99). On the iPhone 3GS, it can take several seconds to apply various filters to pictures in this app. On the iPhone 4, the same tasks take about a second.

Likewise, some games are noticeably faster, even those not yet optimized for iOS 4 or iPhone 4. Also, the few lags that previously existed in things like typing are now gone as well.

When you’re on WiFi, browsing the web can actually seem like a faster experience than doing so from a desktop computer. This is undoubtedly mostly thanks to the proliferation of iPhone-optimized sites. But still, for getting at raw information, the iPhone is now faster in quite a few cases, I’ve found.

On top of the new chip, another factor in the speed boost is like the 512 MB of RAM now included in the device (double what it was in previous iPhones — and double what is even included in the iPad!). But more than speed, this helps with the iOS 4′s new multitasking capabilities. In the week I’ve been using the iPhone 4 with iOS 4, I haven’t noticed the device having to quit any app I’ve loaded that takes advantage of fast app switching. Of course, that’s sort of the point, you’re not supposed to notice this. But with the iPhone 3GS running iOS 4, I have noticed a few times when an app has to restart when I switch back to it.

But the biggest speed difference for the entire device has to be the vast improvements to upload speeds. I like to send pictures I take from my iPhone to Flickr via email. On the iPhone 3GS, this takes a while, as each picture tends to be a little over a megabyte in size. On the iPhone 4, sending these pictures is so much faster — and that’s despite the files being much larger (thanks to the new 5 megapixel camera).

This upload boost is thanks to the iPhone 4′s use of High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA), a 3G data protocol which can boost upload speeds by as much as 10x. If you do a lot of media uploading from your phone, this alone may make the new iPhone worth it.

The Antenna

While we’re on the subject of connectivity speeds, there’s no point in beating around the bush any longer — you likely want to know about the antenna issues of the iPhone 4 that have been widely reported.

At first, during regular use, I didn’t notice anything abnormal about the device with regard to its connection. Of course, I also live in San Francisco where AT&T offers up shitty connections as standard practice.

Then I started reading all the reports and decided to see if I could get the signal to drop myself. Sure enough, I could. I even tried it on a second iPhone 4 in a different area — same result. When wrapping your palm around the lower left corner of the iPhone 4, at least on the two devices I tried, the reception bars definitely start to drop.

I also tried making calls and using data while doing this. In both cases I was able to push the connection to failure when I would shove the iPhone into my left palm. Calls would drop and data would stop. When I released from that specific area of the phone, things would start working again.

But then I decided to try something out. I did the same thing with the iPhone 3GS — and guess what? Same results. Granted, it is much hard to push the connection to this point of failure on that device, but it can be done (by wrapping your hand around the entire bottom of the phone, where the antenna resides). Interestingly enough though, when I would do this on the iPhone 3GS, the signal would degrade, but the bars wouldn’t fall. Perhaps this is why no one noticed this issue on the iPhone 3GS but they are noticing it now (though other videos show the bars falling on the iPhone 3GS as well).

Yesterday, Apple finally issued an official response to this antenna issue. The basic gist? It’s a software bug. More precisely, they claim that the iPhone software currently incorrectly shows signal strength to be better than it is. A software update is supposedly going to “fix” that. Of course, that’s not really a fix at all for the actual signal, it’s just a fix for being misleading about it in the first place.

This seems to go against Apple’s earlier suggestion that you hold the phone a different way or use a case (both of which, of course, imply there is something to the idea that the design of the new device impacting the signal). That said, I spent last weekend in Lake Tahoe which has areas of decidedly better AT&T service than San Francisco. There, I didn’t notice the same falling bar issue, even when I held it in the corner (it would sometimes drop one bar, but not more). Others have noted this as well — when you’re in an area with good service, the bar loss doesn’t seem to be an issue. When you’re in an area with bad service, it is an issue. So more accurate software should at least solve the bars being high enough to drop in the first place.

But all that being said, there is still clearly something to this notion that holding the phone in the lower left corner degrades signal quality. My tests show it, dozens of other tests have shown it as well. And Apple even somewhat acknowledges it, saying this is an issue with all cell phones to some degree.

Here’s my take on this (and while I’m no expert, this seems to be pretty common sense): Apple’s software update should alleviate some concern about the signal drop by being more accurate in the first place. But the signal drop when holding the phone is very real — again, just as it is on other devices like the iPhone 3GS. The fact that the iPhone 4 is the first phone with the antenna on the outside of the phone, I have to believe must exacerbate this issue. And this combination of software plus hardware issue is why we’re all talking about this for the first time.

But at the end of the day, all that matters is this: does the device work? While that’s a more complicated question for me to answer than it should be because I happen to live in an area with notoriously bad AT&T reception, the answer is yes. In regular use (so, not holding the device a certain way to try and get it to fail) the iPhone 4 seems to perform the same with regard to data usage as the iPhone 3GS did. Without all the hubbub over the signal issue, I don’t think I would have noticed a problem (aside from day one when AT&T’s network was clearly getting slammed harder than usual).

As for call quality, I think the iPhone 4 is actually a bit better, believe it or not. I’ve been to at least three spots where I couldn’t make a call before, and now I can. This lends some credence to the idea that the iPhone 4 actually has a better antenna than the previous iPhones, despite the fact that it’s now exposed and seemingly more susceptible to signal degradation.

I have also tried using the iPhone 4 with the new bumpers Apple sells for the device, and it definitely seems to help the lower left corner issue. It’s too bad these things coast $29.99 a pop. I know Apple’s current stance is not to give these things away, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t start doing it if the software update isn’t as effective as they hope.

The Design

All this antenna talk is the direct result of something else: design decisions Apple made for the iPhone 4. Ultimately, they may regret the exterior antenna choice, but it’s hard to argue with the overall package. The iPhone 4 is easily the best piece of mobile hardware I’ve ever laid my hands on.

In my initial thoughts (again, after playing with the device for about 20 minutes), I noted that the iPhone 4 made the iPhone 3GS feel a bit like a toy in comparison. Well, if the iPhone 3GS feels like a toy, most other smartphones out there feel like toys from the 99 Cent Store compared to iPhone 4. It’s just at a whole different level.

I happen to have 10 other recently popular cell phones laying around my apartment (dating back to the Motorola RAZR — the phone I used right before the original iPhone). I decided to pick each up just to see how they feel compared to the iPhone 4. It’s kind of a joke. Some feel okay (the EVO and Nexus One), but nowhere close to the iPhone 4. Some feel pure amateur by comparison (the Palm Pre and the myTouch 3G). And some feel like I’m holding a Zack Morris or Gordon Gekko-style brick (the G1). In fact, the best of the bunch was the original iPhone with its aluminum back, in my opinion.

There has never been an iPhone that feels more solid, looks so symmetrical, and has buttons that feel so right. I’m sure someone will tell me there’s a phone out there that’s crafted at least as well (perhaps in one of the European countries). But I have no doubt that if such a device exists, it’s one that 99.99% of us will never see or use because it probably costs thousands of dollars. That may be the most impressive thing about the iPhone 4 — it’s priced to move at just $199 (or $299 — both after AT&T subsidy, obviously).

No other phone in that price range can touch the iPhone 4 in terms of design and build quality. Not by a long shot.

That’s actually the other thing that saddens me about the bumper — it just makes the device feel (and look) cheaper. That said, the bumper is very useful when setting your device down flat because it provides some room between the all glass back and whatever surface it’s on. This glass is supposedly extremely strong, but that doesn’t mean sticky substances can’t muck up say, the back camera.

The Camera

Speaking of the camera, it’s a thing of beauty. Maybe you’ve heard Apple’s marketing talk that “it’s about more than megapixels” — coined because the iPhone 4 has a 5 megapixel camera while rivals like the EVO have an 8 megapixel one. Well, it’s not actually just marketing talk, it’s absolutely true.

I have both devices and the iPhone 4′s camera is definitely better the EVO’s. And that’s just in quality — as previously mentioned, the camera software on the EVO seems to be buggy and often has issues saving pictures. I haven’t had an issue once on the iPhone. The EVO also makes it hard to switch between the back and front camera on the device. On the iPhone 4, it’s a one-click process right there on the screen.

What most impresses me about the iPhone 4′s camera though is its ability to shoot in low light. In that regard, it reminds me much more of my Canon S90, than any other camera phone I’ve ever used. The iPhone 4 includes an LED flash, and it works fine, but I’m tempted never to use it because this thing is so good in low light. (See: the picturea below taken with the iPhone 4.)

Just as impressive as the still camera is the iPhone 4′s ability to shoot HD video (720p). This matches the EVO and other Android phones in terms of quality and it also brings it up to par with the stand-alone Flip HD cams. The quality of HD videos taken with the iPhone 4 is excellent. There are some stability issues if your taking the video while walking, but standing still, things look amazing (see: below).

FaceTime

The other big element of the iPhone 4 Apple is playing up (and, in fact, the only element they’re playing up in commercials right now) is FaceTime. Yes, I know, other phones have done video chat for some time now. But the fact that seemingly everyone is talking about mobile video chatting for the first time with this release says just about all you need to say.

As a technological demo, FaceTime is impressive. It really is one-click-and-it-works provided both parties have iPhone 4s are are connected to WiFi. There’s nothing to set up, nothing to configure. You hit the button and it works.

As a real world usable technology, FaceTime is profound. It’s one thing to do demos for your friends. It’s another when you make your first real FaceTime call. There you are, somewhere in the world, face-to-face with someone else, someplace else in the world. Once the initial cool factor wears off, it’s like your in the room with them. And Apple is ingenious to play this up in their commercial (below).

But what’s even crazier about FaceTime is that Apple says they will open source the technology — something which Apple doesn’t often do. If third-party developers choose to utilize it, it could be really interesting.

Android

During Google I/O this past year, Google didn’t beat around the bush: the updates they were making with Android 2.2 were aimed squarely at the iPhone. The problem that Android as a platform faces (with regard to challenging Apple) is that they don’t have the control over the software + hardware mix in the same way that Apple does with the iPhone. Yes, they may have taken charge of the design the Nexus One — and that is still, in my mind, their best phone to date — but they don’t have the type of industrial design expertise that Apple does in-house. And it seems unlikely that they ever will unless they change strategy.

Android now brings a lot to the table — plenty of things that the iPhone doesn’t offer such as WiFi hotspot creation, true voice search, and tight Google Voice integration. From a technological and spec sheet perspective, Android is impressive — and it continues to get more so. But from a regular consumer and practical perspective, iPhone remains the device to beat. There are just so many things you can do on the device with such ease that are kind of a pain in the ass on Android. It doesn’t appear that Apple is letting Android phase them — they still focus on quality over quantity.

But that doesn’t mean the moves Google is making with Android don’t alter Apple’s selective areas of focus for the iPhone. And I think it’s great that there are two companies playing off each other in that regard. They’re pushing one another to continue to innovate. And that means all of us, as consumers, win.

From a hardware perspective, iPhone 4 rises to the challenge brought by many Android devices in the year since the iPhone 3GS launched. And it surpasses those devices. It offers a better screen, better camera, better speed, and better battery life than any Android device. But I have no doubt that much of that will again change in the next year, as Android continues to rapidly iterate.

And then iPhone 5 will come out, and we’ll be having this discussion all over again.

Conclusion + One More Thing

In conclusion, if you said you were buying a phone today, I would absolutely tell you to get the iPhone 4. Are there antenna issues? Yes, but they don’t adversely affect the overall experience to the point where I wouldn’t buy this phone over all others. And in fact, in normal day-to-day usage they don’t seem to adversely affect the iPhone usage that I’m used to at all (and that’s not so much a statement in favor of Apple as it is a statement against AT&T).

That brings me to the caveat. And it’s a big one. Since the initial launch of the iPhone there have been rumors about the device coming to Verizon — but those rumors are now louder than ever. The current ones suggest a January 2011 launch date for such a pairing.

If I 100% knew that was the case, there is no way I would recommend anyone to buy the iPhone 4 right now. But, just as was the case last year, I simply don’t know that right now — and I’m not sure anyone besides Apple really does (including both AT&T and Verizon). Basically, buying the iPhone 4 right now is a several hundred dollar bet that it won’t launch on Verizon in 6 months. It’s a gamble.

But there is a silver lining if you choose to make the bet. Even if the Verizon iPhone does launch, it should help the iPhone on AT&T, because there will undoubtedly be defectors by the thousands (if not more). Those users switching will ease the strain on AT&T’s network and could actually render it usable at all times again. It really could be a win-win.

Speculation aside, the iPhone 4 is the smartphone to beat from this point going forward. It will be fun to watch Android try to answer and see if they can dethrone the king before iPhone 5. Leading up to iPhone 4, Android has kept inching closer, but this latest device from Apple is the biggest leap forward the product line has taken yet. It’s going to be hard to beat.

Earlier this week, Boy Genius Report published an email exchange that reportedly took place between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and a frustrated iPhone 4 customer named Jason Burford, who sent some heated messages to Jobs over the phone’s antenna issues. BGR initially attributed one particularly condescending message to Jobs, then updated to say they were mistaken and that it was Burford who wrote it. And then, dozens of blog posts and articles later, Apple told Fortune’s tech blog that the whole thing was fabricated. Engadget later confirmed with Apple that it was a hoax.

Now BGR has posted a followup story maintaining that the email exchange was real, save for that one misattributed message, and they’re basically calling Apple’s PR team liars. In the post, BGR founder Jonathan Geller details how he had the relevant Email headers analyzed and has looked through Burford’s Google Apps account himself (with permission).  And he says that despite what Apple claims, the emails check out. He also mentions that Burford asked for “a nominal fee of a couple hundred dollars” for the emails in question — a fact that doesn’t help his cause, but Geller is confident that they’re real nonetheless:

Is it possible that these replies were fabricated, and didn’t come from someone at Apple sending emails to Jason Burford from Steve Jobs’ email address [email protected]? No. I believe 100% these emails are real, as I have been given access to Jason’s Google Apps email client and verified those headers to be legitimate, undoctored, and kosher. The replies were all real, the timestamps were all matched up, and the thread was consistent. This was not faked in any way whatsoever.

So why does this matter? Given how much attention has been paid to this story, you’d expect there to be some major news involved. In reality, the email exchange itself wasn’t terribly significant: a frustrated customer was upset, and Jobs responded in his typical measured, succinct fashion. Apple has since issued an official (albeit, not terribly convincing) statement explaining the antenna issue away.

What is interesting is the allegation that Apple PR lied on the record to multiple press outlets about the authenticity of the story.  It’s not unusual for PR teams — especially Apple’s — to ignore or give vague or even misleading statements to the press.  But it would be crossing a line to give a statement that is demonstrably false.  We’ve reached out to Apple PR to ask them if they have a response to the new BGR piece.

Editor’s note: Guest author Steve Cheney is an entrepreneur and formerly an engineer & programmer specializing in web and mobile technologies. His last guest post was on Why Mobile Innovation Is Blowing Away PCs

The success of iPhone 4 has been astonishing to witness, despite the antenna issues, proving once again that Apple has a unparalleled ability to differentiate around design and integration, not simply “features.”

Perhaps the best example of this so far is FaceTime, Apple’s take on video-calling. FaceTime makes video-calling on the Android-based Sprint HTC EVO look silly, because the EVO awkwardly requires users to sign up and download a third-party app, then launch it every time they want to talk. Normal people simply won’t do this.

Apple eliminated this friction by innovating at the confluence of hardware and software—hit one button mid-call and the feature just works. It really is amazing (yes, I am channeling Steve Jobs).

But FaceTime is just a teaser of Apple’s deep integration capabilities. Below the surface of hardware / software, Apple is on the cusp of differentiating on a much deeper level, a result of its strategy to vertically integrate at the component level. The advantages of integrating so deeply are subtle but incredibly powerful.

Feature Bloat in Components Benefits Apple:

I recently discussed why innovation in mobile is happening at an unprecedented pace. One primary driver is incredible component innovation.

But this rapid innovation—which is good overall—causes a negative byproduct: “feature bloat.”  The HTC EVO, which crams in 4G wireless, epitomizes this best (sorry, but mobile 4G is not ready for primetime, and I firmly believe Apple won’t even include it on next year’s iPhone 5).

The temptation for companies to differentiate via features is a virtuous cycle: component vendors (Broadcom, TI, Qualcomm) compete aggressively based on integration levels. Handset OEMs like HTC push vendors to release features prematurely, and they make component decisions based on availability of bleeding edge (but often buggy) technology.

This leads to a “kitchen sink” mentality, which conflicts with customer development frameworks, ironically driving a maximum feature set. Pressure from handset OEMs is a driver, but component vendors also tend to use competitive analysis to shape their marketing requirements. Steve Blank made some excellent insights into why this leads to feature bloat. The poor reviews of the HTC EVO are proof that—though alluring—additional features don’t always speak to consumers. Especially when they kill your battery overnight.

Apple thinks much differently about adding features. While the HTCs of the world “differentiate” blindly based on available technology, Apple innovates only when it can create a superior, well-integrated user experience.

Right now this virtuous cycle of feature bloat is accelerating in system-on-chip (SoC) development for the reasons I outlined above. And Apple is poised to sidestep it by vertically integrating and producing chips which mirror its minimalist product strategy.

Supply-Chain Transparency is an Enormous Unspoken Benefit for Apple:

Perhaps even more powerful is an unspoken advantage afforded to Apple’s SoC designers: vertical integration gives them explicit knowledge of what’s happening across the entire component ecosystem and value-chain.

How? Every component vendor in the world visits Cupertino to share its “secret” roadmap—despite the fact that Apple now competes in SoC development. The dangling carrot of an Apple design win simply outweighs any aversion to sharing. This transparency from other chip makers is extremely powerful, since handset OEMs plan several generations out (e.g. Apple is undoubtedly in concept stages with iPhone 6 and the A6).

Apple can learn Broadcom’s chip plans and mull over whether to bring portions of the digital logic related to GPS and WiFi on to the A6. New technologies like NFC for payments—bring in-house or purchase discrete? There are dozens of permutations, each with design challenges, benefits, and risks.

By extracting data from suppliers, Apple’s chip team has a feedback loop into product planning. All of this collective wisdom adds up, helping Apple decide what to roll-up, buy, license, or outsource. Imagine seeing your competition’s entire feature roadmap, and then planning your own SoC strategy. It’s like seeing your neighbor’s wife naked, and deciding afterward whether you’re interested, even though you’re already married.

Cisco has used a similar vertical integration strategy to its benefit in the enterprise for many years (Broadcom and Marvell pitch Ethernet fabrics despite the fact that Cisco builds its own switch chips). But in mobile, Apple is the only company who owns all three elements of the value-chain—hardware, software and chip components (outside of Samsung). Nokia divested its component division to STMicro, and Ericsson and Motorola spun off theirs as well.

As multicore ARM-based chips accelerate, and as software / hardware integration becomes more of a differentiator, Apple engineering teams will out-innovate competitors at the intersection of these three levels (again, antenna issues aside). It’s much more difficult for Google, Motorola, and others to cross-pollinate information from their own independent silos.

In tomorrow’s smartphone wars, this transparency into the entire mobile value-chain will give Apple an incredibly powerful advantage. This strategic implication wasn’t lost on Steve Jobs when he made the decision to vertically integrate and compete with the giants in the semiconductor world.

Fact is, Apple is a company run by brilliant strategists and user experience designers, not engineers. They know that deep component, hardware, and software integration gives Apple an enduring advantage as mobile platforms evolve. Which is why Apple will undoubtedly produce more devices and features that become huge hits like iPhone 4 and FaceTime.

Anybody out there remember the Rockman? It was this little personal guitar amplifier, about the size of a Sony Walkman (adding “man” to anything portable was all the rage in the 80s, you know).The Rockman let you play distorted guitar through headphones and it curiously made everything you played sound like BOSTON.

The AmpliTube iRig combo for the iPhone is kind of like the Rockman except WAY cooler. WAY, WAY, WAY cooler. We first told you about it a couple of weeks ago. I finally got my hands on one and while it’s been reviewed once or twice since that time, I thought I’d give you my view on it anyway since it ships this week – July 6 to be exact.

Read more…

In a speech at the American University last Thursday, President Obama highlighted the incredible economic rewards that America has gained from its immigrants. He spoke of new waves of immigrants—from places like Ireland, Italy, Poland, and China—challenging the generations before them, and consequently being subjected to “rank discrimination and ugly stereotypes”.  Yet the immigrants kept coming to America. That’s because it was the only land of opportunity. The President wants lawmakers to fix the immigration system so that America can remain globally competitive. But I don’t think it’s that simple. America is no longer the only magnet for the world’s best and brightest. Fixing immigration policy is an important start, but it won’t be enough to stop the brain drain of highly educated and skilled workers that the U.S. is presently experiencing.

Just last week, there were two notable visitors to Silicon Valley—Russian President, Dimitry Medvedev, and Chile’s minister of Economy, Juan Andres Fontaine. President Medvedev wanted the brilliant Russian-born and -educated programmers who write some of the Valley’s most sophisticated software to know that they are welcome back home and that he is setting up a science park for them. Minister Fontaine wants to turn Chile into a tech hub and is following my advice on how to make this happen: by attracting immigrants; building a diverse culture that encourages risk-taking and openness; and creating networks of mentors. Over drinks (some excellent Chilean wine), the minister told me of a new program that Chile is piloting to lure bootstrappers. Chile will grant $40,000 and provide some really cheap office space and accommodation to budding entrepreneurs from anywhere in the world. All they have to do is to build their products in one of the most beautiful locations on the planet. Chile is betting that once these entrepreneurs get there, they will never want to leave.

China is also doing all it can to get its scientists and engineers to come back home. It is spending billions of dollars to establish research institutes and build technical capacity. Returnees to China are now powering its most significant scientific breakthroughs. For example, according to the Washington Post, at the National Institute for Biological Sciences, which is responsible for half of the peer-reviewed publications in China, all of the key scientists are returnees from the United States.

I witnessed on my recent trip to India how much things had changed there, as well.

At Startup Saturday, which has become a regular hangout for tech entrepreneurs in Delhi, I gave a talk to a group of about 100 company founders. I was surprised at how similar they were to the techies I know in Silicon Valley: they are building the same types of products; have the same interests; ask the same questions; and, like their Valley brethren, complain that venture capitalists won’t give them the time of day.  I learned that more than one-third of these entrepreneurs were returnees from the U.S. They went back for the same reasons that my research had highlighted: they missed their family and friends and saw greater opportunities in India than in the U.S. Now they are invigorating the entrepreneurial ecosystem back home.

The returning techies aren’t only building tech companies. After completing his MBA at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Ritesh Bawri built a very promising product that could capture a customer’s real-time purchase intent. He had VCs lined up to provide funding but decided not to pursue this because he saw an even greater opportunity back home, in India. Among his father’s business interests was a cement business that produced $10 million a year in revenue. Ritesh knew that, with India’s need for infrastructure, there was almost unlimited potential for growth. But this would require rethinking production and distribution methods, importing new technologies from the west, and building the logistics infrastructure to consolidate the materials supply chain. Ritesh returned home in 2003 and raised about $110 million in financing from financial institutions and private equity funds to purchase assets and build plants, and revamped the cement business’s operations and strategy. His bet paid off.  His company, Calcom Cement, has become a hugely profitable $250 million business and expects to hit $2 billion in revenue in 2016.

Some of India’s best and brightest won’t even consider moving to the U.S. Ashish Sinha started his career in 1999 at one of the first successful tech companies in India, called Aztec software. Later, he worked for Ketera, IBM, and Yahoo, in India. He was offered several opportunities in the U.S., but believed his career would progress better in India. In 2007, Ashish started India’s TechCrunch—a site called PluGGd.in, which now draws 1.1 million visitors a month. Ashish takes a lot of pride in his decision not come to the U.S. as an H-1B worker. He says “I have seen a whole lot of my friends go to the U.S. for IT services/outsourcing jobs, and repent later as it hardly brings satisfaction to one’s soul”.

Arvind Nigam and Praveen Kumar Sinha are in the process of moving their ideas-crowdsourcing software company, called BubbleIdeas, to Singapore because the Indian government places restrictions on Paypal types of transactions, and they want to be closer to western markets. When I told Arvind about Chile, he thought it would be an even better place to move to, because of its physical and cultural proximity to the U.S. and Europe.  I asked Arvind whether he had considered the U.S.  His response: “too expensive… and who needs to put up with the visa nightmares?”.

The U.S. immigration debate will no doubt going be contentious and get bogged down in the issue of providing amnesty to people who entered the country illegally. The reality is that, no matter how long the debate takes or how it concludes, the poor and unskilled will still be here. But the educated and skilled professionals—who could be creating new jobs and making the U.S. more competitive—won’t be here. They will, instead, be boosting the economies of other countries. The U.S. will need not only to change its immigration policies to welcome skilled immigrants, but also to keep those who are already in the U.S. And  it will have to do what countries like China, Singapore, and Chile are doing:  send its scouts out to find and recruit the best talent in other countries.

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com.

“On Monday, federal prosecutors accused 11 people of being part of a Russian espionage ring, living under false names and deep cover in a patient scheme to penetrate what one coded message called American “policy making circles.””

They weren’t particularly good spies, apparently. They were directed to gather information on nuclear weapons, American policy toward Iran, C.I.A. leadership, Congressional politics and many other topics. But at least two of them chose to pursue these goals by working at tech startups.

But statistics don’t lie. Based on recent espionage data we’ve rigorously gathered (from the NYTimes article), fully 18% of all Russian spies also work at tech startups. Amazing.

It seems mathematically improbable to say the least that two of the people accused of being Russian spies are in our relatively small tech community. One is Anna Chapman, who was recently pitching her startup NYCRentals.com to just about anyone who’d listen.

The other spy (lol) who is also a tech startup employee is Tracey Foley:

In Cambridge, Mass., the couple known as Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley, who appeared to be in their 40s and had two teenage sons, lived in an apartment building on a residential street where some Harvard professors and students live.

“She was very courteous; she was very nice,” Montse Monne-Corbero, who lives next door, said of Ms. Foley. The sons shoveled snow for her in the winter, Ms. Monne-Corbero said, but they also had “very loud” parties.

When Foley wasn’t throwing those very loud parties, Foley pursued her spy career by working as a field agent for Seattle-based Redfin, a real estate startup we’ve covered often. Foley’s job consisted of showing people houses for sale when a lead agent was taking a long lunch or something.

Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman sort of argues that his customers deserved to know the truth in a blog post he wrote disclosing Foley’s employment with the company: “since she has been accused of a grave crime, we have disclosed the facts of our relationship with Ms. Foley here.”

But what Kelman is really saying, of course, is “HFS, how cool is it that one of those spies worked for us! Redfin FTW!” I mean it’s not like he now has to worry about thinking up interesting anecdotes at cocktail parties for the next twelve months at least. He’s all set.

I just wish someone at TechCrunch – me for instance – was actually secretly a deep cover spy. Blogger by day, but at night I throw on a tuxedo and zip off to North Korea in a stealth jet to kick some serious communist butt. And then get the girl(s) and take off in the rogue nuclear submarine I just stole. My God, the links we’d get once I was finally arrested would be worth millions. And the book and movie deals…priceless.

err, sorry, back to my point. Which I do have one I think. And it’s basically this: WTF?

One of the big announcements at this year’s Google I/O was that a new Chrome Web Store was being built. Think of it as Apple’s App Store or the Android Market but for web apps. In it, you’ll be able to purchase (or download for free) and install apps that can run in Google’s Chrome web browser. Google would only commit to the store and apps being ready “later this year,” but work on app compatibility for Chrome progressing quite nicely.

Builds of Chromium (the open source browser behind Chrome) have actually been able to run early apps for weeks now. The ability is still hidden behind a flag, but if you go here you can figure out how to turn on the functionality. As you can see in the screenshots below, these builds allow you to install apps (you can find some here) that then reside on your main “Most visited” Chrome page (the one with web page thumbnails for sites you often visit). From here, you can click on any of these apps to launch them in a new pinned tab.

Obviously, this isn’t as simple as it’s going to be with the full Web Store in place. But it’s still not too bad either. Clicking on a link to an app brings up a prompt to ask if you’d like to install it — just like you get when you install a Chrome extension. An overlay at the top of the browser then lets you know when the app is installed.

Eventually, it looks as if installed apps will have different looking tabs than regular pinned web pages (for now they look the same). It also looks like the UI for these apps will be a lot nicer by the time things launch, and there will be an easier way to delete apps from the page they reside on (see bottom image).

One quick note: the latest builds of Chromium for Mac appear to have the way to get to apps disabled. So you might want to try an older version from early June. At least one thread warns that apps might be available on the Windows versions of Chrome first, and Mac and Linux later.

[thanks Joe]

So, we finally got around to taping the first episode of our show for TechCrunchTV. It took us a while to figure out what the show was actually going to be but we knew the name: “Too Long; Didn’t Watch.” If I have to explain that to anyone, you clearly haven’t read either of our work.

Originally it was going to be a hilarious romp through the week’s news, but it seems that slot has been taken by the charismatic and slightly better titled “OMG/JK.” So in a bid to be different, we decided we would cover only tech and entrepreneurship news from outside of Silicon Valley. Of course, the problem is Valley companies tend to drive more traffic. So in a way, this show is an experiment to see if TC readers do indeed care about life outside the echo chamber.

Our first episode involves  spies, sex, lies, giggling and of course videotape: We discuss the weird story of alleged Russian spy, Anna Chapman and her odd social media approach to spying. It makes us wonder how many entrepreneurs out there are really just sleepers for foreign powers. Loic LeMeur, we’re watching you.

(This post will self-destruct in five seconds.)

What does Yammer’s David Sacks have to do with Apple’s reception hiccup? And what does DoubleTwist’s Jon Johansen have to do with Google Me? To be honest, not a whole lot. But we had both founders in on Friday morning, for our fifth episode of TechCrunch NOW.

For those who are unfamiliar with the program, TechCrunch NOW is a daily show (Monday-Friday, 3 PM PST) where we combine an assortment of entrepreneurs, investors, reporters and other tech personalities to debate the top headlines. This week, our line-up included Cyan Banister, founder of Zivity (and host of Speaking Of), Brian Singerman of Founder’s Fund, Ryan Sweeney of Accel Partners, Andy McLoughlin, co-founder of Huddle, Michael Seibel, CEO of Justin.tv, Evan Soloman, VP of Marketing for Justin.tv, and our OMG/JK dream team MG Siegler and Jason Kincaid.

We don’t expect our guests to be designated experts for each headline— however, as an engaged player in technology, his/her perspective will add an extra layer of context and facilitate intelligent discussion.

On today’s episode, we got a chance to delve a little deeper into Apple’s amusing press release, its botched formula for calculating reception, the problems with the Android marketplace, and the upcoming fight between Google and Facebook.

Below are a few highlights:

On the Android marketplace:

During our show, Jon Johansen got a chance to elaborate on his recent post, “Google’s Mismanagement Of the Android Market.” On Sunday, the co-founder of DoubleTwist (a music service often described as the ‘iTunes for Android’), ripped Google for failing to curate the Android marketplace— leaving it vulnerable to clutter, less-than-legal apps and making it difficult for quality apps to surface.

Rant aside, Johansen says there is a “middle ground” here, where Google can balance its desire to remain open and the need to control the Android eco-system: “Both Palm and Android have this option where you can actually install apps from outside the market…so even if Google started curating the Android market more and flushing out some of these spam apps for instance, that wouldn’t necessarily make the Android market not open anymore because you can still install apps from anywhere else.”

Sacks, also agreed that Google needs to overhaul its system to be more developer-friendly. As a CEO who has an app on the iPhone and the Android platforms, he said it has been a struggle for his team to design apps around the different Android devices and for each iteration of the operating system (although he notes that both Apple and Google still rank higher than RIM).

After our interview, Johansen told me he was looking for more editorial control and improved search algorithms for the market. Google, if you’re listening, he actually has a four-pronged plan for the Android:

“Here’s a few things Google needs to do:

1. They need to expand the number of countries that have access to paid apps (it doesn’t seem to be a big priority as they’re adding them at an extremely slow rate)
2. Developers need to be able to respond to user comments (perhaps through a proxy email to preserve the anonymity of the user)
3. Illegal apps need to go. They’re unfair competition for legitimate apps.
4. More payment options (subscriptions, in-app payments, etc).”

On Google Me vs. Facebook

Meanwhile, in the last portion of our round-up, David Sacks delivered a bold prediction for Google Me: Google Me, on its own will not be able to take down Facebook, if they want to tackle the 800-pound gorilla in social they will have to buy Twitter:

“I think it’s going to be very difficult to create a new social network that just copies Facebook…Google already tried with Buzz to bootstrap off of Gmail, to create a social network, and I think that failed….If it’s just a clone of Facebook it’s certainly going to fail…The only other sort of social networks that have achieved scale on the consumer side in a big way have been Twitter and I guess you could kind of argue LinkedIn…I basically agree with what Keith Rabois wrote which is that Google’s best shot of getting into social networking would be to acquire Twitter. I definitely don’t think they’ll be able build a product themselves that will be able to get significant traction.”

He also ominously warned that in the long term, the market might not be big enough for both a Twitter and Facebook. See the full video above.

Any suggestions for our show or guests you want to see? E-mail me at [email protected], subject: TechCrunch NOW.

The bizarre case of Russian Spy ring arrested by the FBI earlier this week just keeps on getting stranger. In particular, one of the alleged spies, 28-year-old Anna Chapman, is getting a lot of attention because of her “vixen” looks and lingerie shots on Facebook. Now, her former husband in London says her father was a former KGB officer and that she left him to pursue her startup dreams in the United States.

Chapman networked her way into the New York City entrepreneurial scene. In fact, before New York Entrepreneur Week last April, she sat down for a video interview to talk about her apartment rental Website, NYCRentals.com. You can watch the video below, courtesy of And Now Media (it has appeared elsewhere on the Web). Chapman does not come across as a very sophisticated businesswoman, or spy for that matter. Initially, she comes across as something of a red-headed ditz flirting with the camera, or maybe she is just nervous, but as she begins to talk about her business she starts to sound a little more believable.

The Website is up and running, although it is barebones. And she was shopping around a business plan, really more of a two-page executive summary, which we have obtained exclusively (also embedded below). NYCRentals is an apartment search engine which brings together listings for a very limited number of apartments in some neighborhoods of New York City. The executive summary pitches it as a vertical search engine for apartment rentals which aggregates listings from different broker sites. It is not a particularly original idea.

The name of the company behind the site is PropertyFinder, which is described as an “affiliate of a holding company in Russia by Anna Chapman who holds the majority shares in that company as well.” It is obvious the document was written by someone without a full mastery of English. It lists “Graigslist” as a competitor and is filled with grammatical errors. One typical sentence reads:

By specializing on narrow region it will allow for a system to gather not only information about letting but also create rich with information database with buildings, city infrastructure, other useful and relevant for choosing real estate to live area specifics.

Maybe NYCRentals was just a front to give Chapman an excuse to meet high-profile targets. Or maybe she really thought she could crack the New York City rental market. Update: It appears that the domain NYCRentals.com was only recently purchased on June 22 for $25,350.

It is still not clear what Chapman’s role in the alleged spy ring was or why she sought publicity. One theory is that these so-called spies were really trying to infiltrate different parts of American society to network and perhaps find valuable contacts who could provide real intelligence to Russia. But all evidence so far is that these spies who could not shoot straight. One contact from New York Entrepreneur Week who met with Chapman on several occasions, Aron Shoenfeld (no relation to me), describes her as a “very aggressive networker.” But she seemed no more aggressive than any ambitious entrepreneur. Maybe entrepreneurs would make good spies.

Or maybe she just wasn’t a very good spy.

Perhaps you heard, Microsoft has killed the Kin, its mobile device that was all of six weeks old. Some people were upset by this. Now they have a place to let our their grief, and pay their respects: KinRIP.com.

As the site notes, the Kin lived from 2010 to 2010 — it died at the ripe old age of 0. “She” was botn on May 13, 2010 and died on June 30, 2010. “We will remember her forever,” the site notes. Visitors are asked to light a candle in remembrance of the device, and already dozens have. You can also add your favorite photos of the Kin to the page.

Some choice statements left on the page:

• “Damn Kin, you were so fast we can never touch you. RIP.”
• “Sadly, you saw the Blue Screen of Death up close and personal. R.I.P K.I.N”
• “i held you for a few minutes only to leave you for the droid x im sorry :-(“
• “Most of all, I’ll miss those stellar commercials. RIP Kin.”
• “How appropriate that there will be no RECEPTION”
• “Kin, you’re the Betamax of phones but the iPhone of my heart.”

The memorial site, created by Shmuel Tennenhaus, has nearly 7,000 visitors so far paying their respects. It’s not clear if it will end up being as big of a memorial as the IE Funeral yet. Of course that product had millions more users, and is actually still not even dead yet.

This site was built using ForeverMissed, a online tool that lets users create memorial pages for departed loved ones for free. Obviously, this Kin page is a joke, but the site behind it seems like a nice idea, so hopefully this will drive more usage of that.

RIP Kin.

One thing we tried – very hard – to nail down yesterday was the price Disney paid for Tapulous. Disney appears to be extra paranoid around the price leaking, and forced key executives and investors to sign specific nondisclosure agreements promising not to disclose that information.

All of which of course makes us really, really want to know.

The purchase price was somewhere between $22 million and $50 million, we’ve confirmed via multiple sources. Employees, say one source, appear to be getting paid based on that lower number. But there is clearly an escrow and an earnout as well that is bumping the total price, if that money is paid out, to something over $30 million. Our best guess is the total price is somewhere around $35 million.

That’s not bad for a company that’s raised just $2.8 million in funding. But Tapulous was profitable almost immediately and didn’t need to raise a lot of money to scale. Revenue comes from multiple sources – ads, song downloads referred to iTunes, song downloads into the game, among others. Last year revenue was around $5 million. This year they are already hitting $1 million/month and will likely have $15 million of so in revenue for all of 2010.

The gaming space is very, very hot right now and all startups with any real traction are fielding buy offers left and right. We’ll see a lot more deals like this over the coming months, with Zynga, Disney, Playdom and others buying.

For many small business owners, managing financial health can be an overwhelming process. From credit cards to cash flow to saving, small businesses have many different fiscal elements to consider when monitoring finances. Mint.com helped solved this problem for consumers. And today, Y Combinator-backed startup Indinero is launching its real-time financial dashboard that has a simple ambition: to be the Mint.com for small businesses.

Like Mint, Indinero uses Yodlee to allow businesses to transferring bank and credit card account information from financial institutions. But Indinero’s site caters to the financial health and needs of small businesses, breaking out data that addresses cashflow, runway, spending, profits and more.

Indinero’s co-founder Jessica Mah tells me that complex accounting software like Intuit’s Quickbooks can often be confusing to navigate. Similar to Mint, Indinero’s interface is simple and easy to use. It makes pretty graphs of a business’ finances to make data trends more understandable. Indinero will soon include a forecasting feature, which will provide businesses an future glimpse into their financial performance based on past data and industry trends. And eventually businesses will be able to compare their performance to other companies of their size and industry focus.

The startup doesn’t aim to replace a human bookkeepers, but actually helps business owners collaborate with bookkeepers. Inidinero allows you to import data directly into Quickbooks, saving bookkeepers from the arduous task of inputing data into the program.

Indinero of course faces competition from Mint. And there are a number of sites providing simple bookkeeping applications for small businesses including Outright, Freshbooks and others.